GALAXY Z FOLD 2: Here's Why I'm Keeping It By Droid Life

What's, going on guys welcome back Ellen here with the droid life, so I think this I think it lived up to the hype Galaxy Z fold to here. Our full written review is up at the site. If you want to go through that, I took on sort of the uh, the video side of it, and I did that because Tim and I both have the phone, he wrote up his thoughts and I just it's such an interesting, different, potentially game-changing, futuristic ridiculously expensive device that I just couldn't help, but talk some more about it. So this is my thoughts on why the Galaxy Z, full 2, is probably my next phone now, if you're confused as to why I'm talking about what should be my next phone or what is my next phone, and I have new phones all the time. Well, typically, how it works is we review phones, and then we go back to whatever phone we actually own. Most of them are review units, and we get done with those and if we like them, maybe we'll go buy one.

If we don't love them, we'll just go back to the other phone that we already own, that we already paid money for so with this one. I actually bought this phone because I thought it was going to be the phone for me and rarely does that ever turn out to be the case. Like the Surface Duo, I picked that up. It was awful. I returned it, this phone, if it was gonna, be awful.

I would certainly just return. It turns out it's its not awful. Now it does take some getting used to, but I certainly have fallen for the idea and I don't think I'm going to get over it anytime soon. So what I want to do here is just kind of walk through it's gonna, be a lot of talking. Apologies for that.

I want to talk about why this phone, I think, has won me over what the reasons are that it works for me, and it might actually work for you even with its absurd two thousand dollar price, and I'm not just going to sell you because it folds it's its much deeper than that and by deeper I mean yes, it's its cool that it does this TH, this folding thing: it's never going to get old, you own, the phone. I've had it for two weeks or something now it's still the coolest thing ever now. If we didn't live in a global pandemic and I could see other humans, I would probably show it off more and be like look how cool this is. You're gonna! Do that, but one day you know, maybe I will get to do that. So yes, that that is very much one of the cool parts, but it's the usefulness of a foldable, at least in this form factor.

I am no fan of clamshell, flip phones, racer, z, flip those devices. I think they make zero sense. They fold in half to create a tiny little pocketable thing. That's absolutely useless until you fold it back open, so there's constantly this action of you needing to open it in order to be able to use it, which is an extra step. None of us want this phone.

You can do what you want. If you want more, you get more. That's why this phone device, whatever you want to call it, makes so much more sense. So anyway, that's kind of number point number one I want to hit at. Are you get it both a phone and a tablet, and not only just a tablet? You get a mini tablet, which probably better than your tablet now I'll come back to my tablet, hating in just a moment, but what's been so fun for me about this phone.

Is that as I'm now granted again we're living through a global pandemic, and it's never going to end and- and so I spent a lot of time at home and the idea of the couch phone that we sort of joke about, like this checks, all those boxes, but when I have ventured out and risked my life, I I I get what I want here. I get what I want here. I get the phone and not only that it's a phone with a big screen and sure it's long, and it's awkward, but it's one handable most phones nowadays can't be used with one hand I can reach across the entire screen of this. Furthermore, I can't do that on my Pixel 4 XL, some other phone. You have to really reach it's hard to do so.

I have a phone, that's 100, one handable and sure it's thick, and it's heavy and managing it from that sense. Can it's taken some getting used to um and that's one of the cons we'll come back to, but you have kind of a one-handed phone which I can't remember the last time I said I had a one-handed phone, but then from there. This is where we come back to me. You know hitting on your tablet, which I just did. This is the perfect size tablet.

It is what is it? Uh, almost eight inches seven point six inch display when you open it up. It's 120 hertz, it's AMOLED the resolution's high, but it's its it's a one-handed tablet. So a lot of you may have a phone, and then you pick up your tablet when you're at home sitting on the couch totally understand that I used to not get it. I do I think now, but with this I have phone when I'm doing everything on the go in moving around doing whatever playing with my kid and then when I'm chilling on the couch, which we do all the time now I get a mini tablet, and it's not this big two-handed tablet where I'm holding hands this way. I get a small tablet where I can still hold it with one hand.

Furthermore, I can still kind of navigate and do the things I want with one hand it's really easy to type on this way. Furthermore, I can swipe around it. It doesn't weigh a lot when you're thinking of it from a tablet perspective, and so you get phone, you get mini tablet, and it's not a big gaudy tablet, that's heavy, and you can't handle it's a mini tablet. So your phone and mini tablet and a phone, that's one handable, then a mini tablet. That's almost it's just kind of the best of both worlds, and I don't think anything else gives you this all right.

So I think that's all sort of stating the obvious right that you get a tablet. You get a phone, I'm not I'm, not selling you there, because that's obviously the point of the device. That said. The second point I wanted to make is that, yes, this phone costs two thousand dollars, and I'm never going to try to justify it costing two thousand dollars, but you do get phone and tablet in one. So if you were to buy two high-end devices, a high-end phone and a high-end tablet, I mean if you bought a galaxy s20 and the new tab, s7 plus or whatever it's called we're talking two thousand dollars, so you're getting there.

But this is all in one okay, again I'll. Let you decide what you think about that, but what they have done, though, is giving you that high-end hardware experience that you would potentially get from spending two thousand dollars on two separate devices. So you're future-proofed is where I'm going here. You have a snapdragon, 865 plus so the newest processor, from Qualcomm high-end GPU. If you want a game, you want to do those heavy lifting things.

You have the super quad HD, whatever display AMOLED 120 hertz refresh rate, you have a HD display on the outside and yes, it would be nice if that was 90. Hertz 120 there's room for improvement with round three um, but you have a 4500 William hour battery, which has been plenty I'm getting easily through a day, but you've got the fastest storage available. You have 256 gigabytes of base storage, UFS 3.1. Then you have 12 gig ram superfast ram, you're, never going to slow down doing anything. You have wired charging.

That's fast! You have wireless charging, that's sort of fast, but it's there, and you can power share. If you want to charge your buds or whatever you've got a triple camera on the back with the flexibility, I think everyone wants. You have standard ultra-wide telephoto, now they're, all 12 megapixels. You don't have some wild 108, megapixels or 48 megapixels, although most of those cameras would be bend down to about 12 anyway. But so you have three cameras with the flexibility you have all the camera modes that you would want.

Uh portrait modes, night modes, slow motion, pro modes, video modes, whatever you have all of that. You have cameras everywhere too. By the way you have one up front three in here another one on the inside, and you can use all of those cameras. However, you want you can take selfies with these. You can take selfies with these.

You know you have that sort of flexible. Furthermore, you have Wi-Fi six, so we're supported there. Furthermore, you have 5g we're supported on all the 5g networks throughout the future for several years to come, which we still can't even take advantage of this. Is there um stereo speakers, so you've got that good media experience. You have a fingerprint reader, that's not one of those trash things that they put in the display that doesn't work it's over here, it's in the power button.

It's a capacitive fingerprint! You just put your finger on, and it works every time, and it's fast, you know, and it works easily, because this is where your thumb rests. So you have the fingerprint reader where you want it: it's not the fidgety thing in the display. That's going to drive you nuts for three years. It has everything you need for a 2, 000 phones. I guess the doubles as your phone and tablet it's just about as high-end as it gets, and again I'm not trying to sell you on 2, 000 or something people should go spend.

But if that's what you're looking for phone and tablet combo, this has it together, and it costs what you would spend if you spent the kind of money you would need to get this level of a device all right. So, so moving on to this next point now, this is going to be a tough one. For some of you to probably stay with me, it's going to be it's going to be a little out there, and- and I want to talk software after going through the hardware and where this gets a little weird. Are you have this unique form factor right that folds, and you can kind of have two experiences or three experiences or whatever, but Samsung hasn't really done anything to take advantage of that, and that's fine with me, because it's and the way the android is set up with Samsung's skin? It actually works pretty well, and they've done some things to take advantage of that. I like- and I guess I'm hoping that in the future it'll bring more, but so some things that I like right.

You have the front cover display, and it goes fully up and down now from corner to corner and that's not in the middle. So you have this experience and this is its own experience. So I have a home screen here. That's only one screen because it's kind of my get in get things done, get back out screen. You know like I, can access music or Instagram or check my email or calendar whatever check the weather.

So that's here, but when I jump inside it's a totally different experience. I have a couple of different shortcuts at the bottom I swipe over here, and this is where my standard setup comes into play from all phones, basically with my folders and all the apps I use, so I have that experience sort of tailored to the bigger screen and the other one is meant to just kind of get stuff done. So you have those two things which again, I think is one of the beauties of it now Samsung has something has worked in like this area. Right where you can. You know like fire up, twitter and chrome at the same time, there's even a triple window thing where you can have two boxes up here and a bigger one.

I have no idea who would use that you can't see enough to make it useful, but so you know they've done some things where you can do that. Um. If I fired up YouTube, and we were watching a video, I can turn it sideways like this, and it'll show. You know video up there, and then I've got some controls down here and other separate experiences, so you can multitask within that um. You know if I were to fire up the camera and I tilt it like this same thing applies right.

I've got the viewfinder here and if I take a shot, it shows me previews. So there are some things that they've done to make it somewhat useful, but that's kind of it from there. You really just have a bigger blown up screen that phone experience screen. So I have my app drawer. Yes, I can see more, it's still Samsung's bad afterward that slides sideways.

You know you still have this experience in the drop-down menu. That looks just like all Samsung's and the settings area is laid out the same and all of that, but that's okay, when it works and for me this works and the gestures by the way android tens gestures, which I don't really love- they're great on a little mini tablet. Um this does run android 10, it's Samsung, one UI 2.5 it'll get android 11 it'll get one UI, 3.0 and Samsung can work to improve further on that. But right now what they've done is just kind of give you the familiar experience, and yet they give it to you in two different places, so you can make it work for you, which I actually appreciate, rather than them, ramming down a special layout for the tablet and a special one for you, no they're, just like no, you do what you want, which I'm glad, because I was worried that they would ram through something else. Now.

The other thing to keep in mind again when you're, making a 2 000 investment in a phone and mini tablet, is how long are we going to get support? Well, Samsung's actually become one of the best at supporting they do at least three years of security updates, they're already starting to confirm further like three years. I think worth of OS updates on their phones now, so you're going to get support for at least three years, and it might be beyond that because they often do security patches beyond three years, so your 2 000 phones will get continued. Software support they'll, continue to innovate and add new features and hopefully make it more of a robust foldable experience, and then they'll give you updates, which you know not. A lot of companies are great at these days outside google, so the software it's out of your way, but that's good. So those three areas out of the way.

I have to point out that there are some not serious, but there are some flaws right number one, there's no water resistance, so I'm back to with this now part of it's the price and all of this damn glass, but you're you're back to setting it down next to your kitchen sink and going yeah. I should probably move that over here, or you're in the bathroom, and you're, like. Maybe I shouldn't bring it to the bathroom. I should leave it in the bedroom, so you're worrying about things that we haven't had to worry about in a long time, partly because of the glass, but partly because there's no water resistance. The other thing is look.

I just talked about how it's a one-handed device and that's what I like so much about this section, but I mean look how thick this thing is and not only thick, it's heavy it really. You really have to wrap your hand up around it. So it's awkward, and it took me a while to get used to it. It's still heavy and awkward to use. Although thankfully it's not sharp, like the Surface Duo was, so it doesn't cut your hand or anything weird, but it's heavy it's thick.

It's awkward to use it actually, when it's in its most comfortable position is here, because you can kind of get your hand on the back, it just kind of rests it. It sort of distributes the weight a little more evenly, and so you can hold it with one hand. So this is fine. This is where you kind of run into issues. You know, and I think there are some areas they can obviously improve too, like we've still got this sizable whole gap up top here.

Right like this, could fold flatter. You know, there are some things like the camera. Hump is awful. I mean it. You know it doesn't sit flat.

It's got a wobble, you can't put it down on anything. Even when it's opened up, you can't really see that it still wobbles, even when it's laid out. So you know there are some issues with that. You can't use an s pen with it, which seems like a huge mistake. Although the screen on the inside, it's probably still too fragile for that, but it would have been nice to have a little s pen action.

I still don't want anyone really touching it. You know the original fold. That was one of the things I talked about. Was it brought back all these weird feelings of not wanting to put it places, but you also just didn't want to let anyone touch it because it's a 2, 000 devices, that's fragile. Those feelings are still here, maybe slightly less, but you don't really want anyone to use it except it's a 2000 phone, that's very cool, and you want people to see this and be able to do this right, except so anyway.

It has. It has some flaws all right, so all that stuff, aside kind of bottom line here. I think this is the phone I'm going to stick with for a while. I just don't see anything wowing me enough to take it away right. The pixel 5 is coming, looks pretty interesting.

I actually like what google's doing this year, decent set of specs great price. Well, pretty reasonable price um, the OnePlus 8t. Also, similar thing. We know the specs will be dynamite. The price will be pretty good.

You worry about the camera a little, but with this thing I get software support for years. Hardware, that's just unreal, I mean the craftsmanship here and then obviously the fact that I can do this is just next level stuff, the camera setup, the triple camera setup. With the three different types of cameras you want in a phone, it's pretty solid I'll, put some I'll put some samples up right now. You should also go look at the written review. Tim will have more there, this camera- I can.

I can rely on it, and it'll, it'll get the job done, whether I'm on the go or just you know, sitting around, whereas like the Surface Duo, while I like that dual screen experience, its camera was just never going to cut it so this phone- I just it's like you own, a little of the future, a little part of the future, which is kind of cool when you spend your entire life doing tech all day every day, knowing that you have something just a little different kind of cool, and so I think that's partly what's keeping me around too is there's still some newness here, whereas a regular old slab phone is its kind of been done a million times over, and we're not seeing that change, whereas this is potentially bringing some of that in. So I think that's it. If you guys have comments or questions, please do. Let me know if you're considering the fold two. I think this is me giving it my stamp of approval.

You should try whatever you can to bring that price well below 2000, if you can uh. Otherwise, let me know what you guys think if you pulled the trigger or not we're droid life, peace.

Source : Droid Life